Humiliated, teen rape victim attempts suicide

Figures submitted by Delhi Police reveal that out of 215 instances of incestuous rape in 2014, fathers were offenders in 43 cases. (PTI File Photo)

"I want to die. I don't want to live that's why I'm taking these medicines. God, please don't make me a girl in my next life. Mom, Dad, please don't blame me for taking this step. I'll know peace only when I'm dead. If possible, do give me some love even after I'm gone."

The message was recorded by a 13-year-old gangrape victim and left on her mother's cellphone minutes before she attempted suicide at AIIMS early Monday.

She was unable to bear the humiliating questions she was being asked in the general ward, from where they wanted to be shifted out, the mother said.

The girl was raped over nine days by eight men in March.

Senior AIIMS official, however, denied that the girl had tried to kill herself.

The 13-year-old, who had twice attempted suicide in the last 10 days, allegedly swallowed a cocktail of medicines and locked herself in the bathroom.

Her sister, who was waiting for her, grew suspicious when she didn't return from the bathroom.

She scaled the wall and unlocked the door.

"She had passed out. We called the doctors who gave her a stomach-wash," the girl's mother told HT.

Her condition stablised by afternoon.

"She consumed the medicines kept on her table. She would often wonder how she would face people after she was discharged," her mother told HT.

"We had requested a separate ward as she was not comfortable with people around her."

The teenager was brought to the hospital on April 22, two days after she took a handful of her father's medicines.

She had tried to slit her wrist on April 19 but her mother stopped her. The girl had been traumatised after she saw TV reports of the rape of a five-year-old girl in Gandhi Nagar.

"She had attempted suicide earlier and that is why she was shifted to AIIMS. There has been no such attempt at AIIMS," said a senior official.

"In fact, the girl was in the general ward where committing suicide is not possible," said the official, who refused to be identified.

On March 15, the girl and her younger brother were kidnapped from Farsh Bazaar in east Delhi, where they lived, and taken to a house in Loni, Ghaziabad, where eight men allegedly raped her in front of her 10-year-old brother.

The girl managed to escape on March 24. It was after court's intervention that rape was added to the abduction FIR.

"She was brought to AIIMS because she was showing suicidal tendencies and the authorities were asked to keep a special watch on her," said a social activist, who is associated with girl's counselling.